Urban Farm Hub

By Garrett Okrasinski

It was recently just my mother’s birthday. Every year as her birthday comes around, the tomatoes start to ripping, zucchinis are plumping and the basil bolting. With my garden in full swing, I decided to make her a veggie summer pasta dish. Everything harvested from the garden goes in! This year I tried something new, I made Zucchini Leaf Pesto to add to the pasta.

As a lover of traditional basil pesto, my mother was a little apprehensive of this pesto experiment. I have already made for her nettle pesto, spinach pesto and arugula pesto which all turned out well. So I continued to push the boundaries.

Earlier that day I had trimmed up my zucchini plants to make sure enough sun, water and pollination was happening. I had all these beautiful green health leaves that I felt bad just putting in the compost. After searching the internet, I found in fact the leaves are edible. In Italy, leaves can be found at the market and are used to make soups or to stuff tomatoes with. The reason the leaves are not used here is because we tended to be further from farms and leaves wilt quickly. From my research, I gathered they are just another leafy green.

I simply created zucchini leaf pesto like any other pesto.

Delicious!!

Ingredients include:

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups of blanched tender zucchini leaves
• 1/4 cup pine-nuts (or almonds)
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup parmesan or pecorino cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine blanched leafs, garlic and pine-nuts in blender and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add oil and continue to blend. Slowly add the cheese of your choice (parmesan or pecorino) and blend until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. You can also add a dash of ground red pepper! You can either use immediately or put in the refrigerator. I have found if you let it sit for a few hours the flavor deepens.

I love to use pesto as a spread on bread for sandwiches, so I intentionally left out some of the oil and added a little more when I mixed it with the pasta.  Thicker consistency can be used for a spread on bread.

I used this pesto with penne pasta and it was a hit! Who knew you could use those leaves?!